Ghana is racing against time to meet the International
Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) ultimatum by 2017 to upgrade its passport to
meet global standards, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Hannah Tetteh has
confirmed.
She explained that no funds from the approved budget
for 2016 will be used to support the passport upgrade, which will be solely executed
on a Build Own Transfer (B.O.T) arrangement.
“The company is expected to pre-finance and over a period
of time be part of a negotiation between the company and the Ministry; they
will be able to recover their investment and at the same time we should be able
to provide upgraded passports for our citizens.”
Already, international firms have been invited to
submit bids -- and according to the MP for Okaikoi Central, Patrick Boamah, the
Foreign Affairs Ministry is requiring that companies who want to show interest
in the project should have a seed money of US$100million. He also questioned
whether the international advertisement would not “shut the door on local
companies”.
However, the Minister maintained: “What we said was
that companies that want to participate should have a turnover not capital. The
reason we did so was that by our cost estimates there will be a significant
amount of money required from such companies upfront in order that we be enabled
to implement this project, which is a B.O.T arrangement”.
Furthermore, she added that the ministry has
anticipated the capital intensity of the project and does not want to go back
to Parliament for any kind of financial assistance or government guarantee.
“We
want to ensure that the company has the wherewithal to implement the project,
even if it does not have the finance itself and also needs to borrow in order
to execute the project. The strength of its own balance sheet should be sufficient
for it to be able to do so. It is not a question of not wanting to include a
Ghanaian company; it is about making sure that whoever becomes our partner in this
process has the capacity,” she said.
Ms. Tetteh also explained that the hand-written
passport is no longer valid, and says attempts to apply for visas with those
will fail.
The black passport remains valid but for a limited
period of time, and the green coloured passport currently in use is not
accepted by some countries due to the absence of some features, she added.
It is for this reason the ministry intends to
introduce the chip-embedded passport in the short to long-term.
Parliament has already approved an amount of GH₵300million
for activities of the Foreign Affairs Ministry.
During this year, applications for Ghanaian passports
are also expected to be done online.The Passport Office will roll-out its online
application system, which is also expected to help check the incidence of
passport racketeering.
Source:B&FT
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